Chelsea's Bayard Rustin High Closing

In May Inside Schools said that "there are fewer fights than there once were" at H.S. 440 aka Bayard Rustin Educational Complex, but "the level of academic achievement still has a long way to go." Apparently it didn't go far nor fast enough: today the Board of Ed announced that the F-graded school on West 18th Street will be shut down. The giant facility, serving more than 1,500 students, had been reorganized into "learning communities" that, it was hoped, would make for a better and less impersonal learning environment. Still, the school remained troubled and last year less than half its seniors graduated. The school will stop accepting ninth-graders and will graduate its last class in 2012.

The DOE says several smaller schools will open in Rustin's building -- in fact, two such schools, Humanities Prep and the James Baldwin School, are already in there somewhere.